I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for sending control channels in a wireless communication network.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with a base station via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the base station.
A base station may transmit data and control information on the downlink to UEs and may receive data and control information on the uplink from the UEs. On the downlink, a transmission from the base station may observe interference due to transmissions from neighbor base stations. On the uplink, a transmission from a UE may observe interference due to transmissions from other UEs communicating with the neighbor base stations. For both the downlink and uplink, the interference due to interfering base stations and interfering UEs may degrade performance.